Romanticism (1820 – 1900)
The Romantic period was an age of individualism, wild imagination, rebellion
against reason, and emotional expression. Painters used bolder, more brilliant colors
along with dynamic motion instead of gracefully balanced poses. Painters like Francisco
Goya in The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters show dark images such as nightmarish
visions and bat-like monsters. Writers used words like painters used color with their
deeper storylines, fascination with fantasy, enthusiasm for the Middle Ages and
Mythology, nature, and their outlook on life with many-sided views. Writers such as
Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman,
and Thomas De Quincy are just a few. Composers also used a greater variety of color in
the music by adding instruments, greater range of dynamics, dissonant tone qualities
(tone combination that is unstable and tense) as well as consonant (tone combination that
is stable and restful) ones, and rubato, a speeding up and slowing down of the tempo.
Composers emphasized on self-expression. It was their goal to be unique and for
the music to reflect their personalities. With this individualism, a very important
movement took place called Nationalism. In Nationalism, composers use individualism
to deliberately created music with their specific national identity. They used folk songs,
dances, legends, and history of their homeland within their music. This contrasts with the
universal character of classical music. This fascination with national identity also led
composers to draw on colorful materials from foreign lands. This became known as
Exoticism.
Composers, along with other artists, created their music with more imagination
than ever before. They developed music set to a story, poem, idea, or scene to be thought
about or read while the music was being performed. This style of writing was called
Program Music. The music actually represents the emotions, characters, and events of a
particular story, or evokes the sound and motion of nature.
Pieces during this time are as diverse as possible. One piece may be written for
over a hundred musicians designed for a large concert hall or opera house and last several
hours in length. Another piece may be written for piano only designed to be enjoyed at
home and last less than a minute.
Composers began fusing each area of art into one art like never before. Their
pieces took on a poetic sound, which in turn the poets wrote poems that flowed as if it
were singing. Poetry and music are intimately fused in the art song, one of the most
distinctive forms in romantic music. This is a composition for solo voice and piano.
Yearning – inspired by lost love, nature, legend, or other times and places – haunted the
imagination of romantic poets. Thus art songs are filled with these ideas. Song
composers would interpret a poem, translating its mood, atmosphere, and imagery into
music. Art songs are sometimes grouped in a set, or song cycle. A cycle may be unified
by a story line that runs through the poems, or by musical ideas linking the songs.
Although they are now performed in concert halls, art songs were written to be sung and
enjoyed at home.
Orchestras were becoming larger in numbers in the Romantic Period. It might
include a hundred members, where in the classical period 20-60 would have been the
enough. The orchestra increased as Ludwig Van Beethoven and other composers added
instruments such as the bass clarinet, English horn, contrabassoon, trombone, and piccolo
in the orchestra. As these instruments became standard, the progression of the brass
instruments increased. The trumpets and horns now had valves and the tuba was
invented in 1835 giving the composer unlimited possibilities with the brass section. The
percussion section was also increased from timpani to cymbals, triangle, snare drum, bass
drum, and harp.
Composers
Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) in many ways personified musical romanticism. His
works are intensely autobiographical, and they are usually inked with descriptive titles,
texts, or programs. Schumann was born in Germany and developed a love of literature
and music from a young age. This helped guide his path as an art song composer. When
he was eighteen, became acquainted with his piano teacher’s nine year old daughter and
prize pupil, Clara Wieck. At twenty-one, Clara went against her father and married
Robert. Their marriage turned out to be a happy one that produced eight children. Clara,
herself a composer, was the ideal interpreter of her husband’s piano works and introduced
many of them to the public. Schumann decided to become a piano virtuoso at the late age
of twenty. Around that time, he developed serious problems with the fingers of his right
hand. In search for a cure, he used a mechanical gadget designed to stretch and
strengthen the fingers. Instead, he was left crippled, and his hopes of being a virtuoso
were crushed. It was at this point that he became a writer and composer. He discovered
and made famous some of the leading composers of his day through his journal, the New
Journal of Music. Robert dealt with depression his whole life, but during his forties, his
mental and physical health progressively deteriorated, and in 1854 he attempted suicide
by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine River. At his own request, he was
committed to an asylum, where he died two years later.
Clara Wieck Schumann (1819 – 1896) was one of the leading concert pianists of the
nineteenth century. She premiered many works by her husband Robert Schumann and by
her close friend Johannes Brahms. From childhood, she was trained on the piano from
both her parents and between the ages of twelve and twenty, she performed throughout
Europe, also usually performing one or more of her own compositions. During her
fourteen-year marriage to Robert, she continued to concertize and compose – though on a
reduced scale because of the seven children (one died in infancy) and take care of her
very sensitive husband. One year before Robert’s attempted suicide, the Schumanns met
Johannes Brahms. Robert helped Brahms to his fame by writing an article in his journal
to praise this young composer. This friendship would last a lifetime. After Robert’s
death, Clara expanded her performing activities, became renowned as a teacher, and
edited Robert’s collected works. She stopped composing because of the predominantly
negative attitude toward woman composers.
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a romantic composer who breathed new life into
classical forms. His intimate knowledge of past masterpieces made him extremely
critical of his own work. He was obsessed by Beethoven and received criticism from
Richard Wagner, but his sarcasm and rudeness helped him mask his insecurities. Once,
on leaving a party, he announced, “If there is anyone here I have not insulted, I
apologize!” On his first concert tour at age twenty, he met two of the greatest composers
then living – Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann. Brahms did not agree with most musical
matters with Liszt and stated that his music lacked form and direction. However, four
weeks after performing for Robert Schumann, his name was the buzz around the musical
world because of the article Robert had written about him. As Brahms was preparing
new works for an eager audience, Robert was committed to an asylum, leaving Clara
Schumann with seven children to support. Brahms rushed to her aid and helped her care
for the children while she went on concert tours to earn money. For two years he lived in
the Schumann home, becoming increasingly involved with Clara. The conflict between
his loyalty to Robert and his passion for Clara may well have accounted for the stormy
music he wrote at the time. Robert’s death left Brahms and Clara free to marry; yet they
did not. A few months later, they separated, although they remained lifelong intimated
friends. Brahms never married; for him, Clara was “the most beautiful experience of my
life.” When Clara lay dying in 1896, his grief found expression in the haunting Four
Serious Songs, set to biblical texts. Not long after, it was discovered that he had cancer.
On March 7, 1897, he dragged himself to hear a performance of his Fourth Symphony.
Less than a month later, at the age of sixty-four, he died.
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) was one of the earliest masters of the art song, and was
unlike any composer before him. He never held an official position as musical director or
organist, and was neither a conductor nor a virtuoso. He was also the first Viennese
composer whose income came from musical composition. Born in Vienna and the son of
a schoolmaster, he loved music so much that he once sold all of his textbooks to buy a
ticket for a performance of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. He became a teacher, but soon
began composing full-time. When he was seventeen, he composed his first art song, then
the next year 143 songs, the next year 179 works including two symphonies, an opera,
and a mass. He wrote over 600 art songs and several other works. He often lived with
friends because of low income. He worked from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m., then spent his
afternoons in cafes, drinking coffee, etc. Evenings were spent at “Schubertiads,”
performances when only his music was played. At age 25, he contracted a venereal
disease, becoming moody and prone to despair. He applied for several positions several
times during his lifetime, but never received them. In 1828, a year after Beethoven’s
death, Schubert died of syphilis at the age of thirty-one.
Fredrick Chopin (1810 – 1849), called the poet of the piano, was the only great
composer who wrote almost exclusively for the piano and the only pianist in history to
have achieved a legendary reputation on the basis of only thirty or so public
performances. He was a shy, reserved man who disliked crowds and preferred to play in
salons rather than in public concert halls. His music reflects this in his variety of moods,
and is always elegant and graceful. Chopin died at age thirty-nine of tuberculosis.
Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886) was a handsome, long-haired, young man who performed
superhuman feats at the piano and overwhelmed the European musical public.
Irresistible to women and an incredible showman, he left a trail of broken hearts from
Paris to Moscow. Paris was Liszt’s home just as it was Chopin’s. But unlike Chopin,
Liszt was the master showman and preferred large crowds. To display his own
incomparable piano mastery, he withdrew from the concert stage for a few years,
practiced from eight to twelve hours a day, and emerged as probably the greatest pianist
of his time. Liszt’s life has three periods. The first is his mastery of the piano discussed
above. The second period is his composition and conducting mastery, when he
completely abandoned his career as a traveling virtuoso pianist. The third period begins
in 1861 when he went to Rome to pursue religious studies. The public was stunned that a
“lady’s man” and virtuoso had become a churchman. With this newfound career, he
composed oratorios and masses, feeling that he had a mission to reform and renew church
music. Liszt is also given the credit for creating the symphonic poem, or tone poem, a
one-movement orchestral composition based to some extent on literary or pictorial ideas.
In essence, Liszt broke away from the typical construction of the symphony to create
something new for the public.
Hector Berlioz (1803 – 1869) was one of the first French romantic composers and daring
creator of new orchestral sounds. He was sent to Paris to study medicine, but was
horrified by the sight of blood. Instead, he began his study of music at the late age of
twenty and quickly filled the gaps of his musical knowledge. When he was twenty-three,
Berlioz fell in love with the works of Shakespeare and also in love with an actress by the
name of Harriet Smithson. He wrote her such wild and passionate letters that she thought
he was a lunatic and refused to see him. Harriet left Paris without meeting him, and
Berlioz was crushed. To depict his feelings, he wrote the Symphonie fantastique
(Fantastic Symphony) in 1830. In this symphony of five movements, each movement
tells a story about his love that leads to a catastrophic ending of Berlioz’s life and torture.
The same theme is used throughout the symphony in each movement, called a fixed idea.
In Paris, Berlioz presented a concert featuring this symphony. In the audience was
Harriet Smithson. When she realized that Berlioz’s music depicted her, she wanted to
meet Berlioz. A year later they were married, however they separated after only a few
years. Berlioz’s music is full of passionate expressiveness, inner fire, rhythmic drive, and
unexpectedness. He used abrupt contrasts including dynamics, instrumentation, and
tempos.
Russian Five:
Cesar Cui (1835 – 1918)
Alexander Borodin (1833 – 1887)
Mily Balakirev (1837 – 1910)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 – 1908)
Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881)
These five men met together in St. Petersburg with the aim of creating a truly Russian
music. They criticized each other’s works and asserted the necessity of breaking from
some of the traditional techniques of German, Italian, and French composers. All had
nonmusical jobs and could compose only in their spare time.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) is probably the most famous of all Russian
composers. So rapid was his progress in music that after graduating he became professor
of harmony at the new Moscow Conservatory. At age thirty, he composed his first great
orchestral work, Romeo and Juliet. This sparked interest from the public in
Tchaikovsky’s music. In 1877, he acquired a benefactress who supplied all of his money
so that he could quit his conservatory position and devote himself strictly to composition.
Tchaikovsky was a prolific composer of both instrumental and vocal works. His most
popular compositions are the Forth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies, Romeo and Juliet, the
ballet scores to Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, and the 1812 Overture.
Bedrich Smetana (1824 – 1884) was the founder of Czech national music. His works
are full of folksongs, dances, and legends of his native Bohemia (which became part of
Czechoslovakia). Though he was recognized as a pianist, those opposed to nationalism
scorned his compositions. In 1865, he moved to Sweden, where he taught, conducted,
and composed symphonic poems in the style of Franz Liszt. In 1862, he returned to
Prague as an active composer, pianist, teacher, conductor, and tireless propagandist for
Czech musical nationalism. At age fifty, Smetana suffered the same fate as Beethoven –
he became completely deaf. Yet some of his finest works followed, including his famous
symphonic poem My Country, which includes The Moldau, describing the river that runs
through Czechoslovakia. He passed his last ten years in acute physical and mental
torment caused by syphilis. He died in an insane asylum at age sixty.
Antonin Dvorak (1841 – 1904) followed Smetana as the leading composer of Czech
national music. He left home at the age of sixteen to study music in Prague. For years he
earned a meager living by playing in an opera orchestra under Smetana’s direction. He
was little known as a composer until his works came to the attention of the German
master Brahms, who recommended Dvorak to his publisher. From this time on, his fame
spread rapidly. In 1892, Dvorak went to New York, where he spent almost three years as
director of the National Conservatory of Music. While here in America, he encouraged
American composers to write nationalistic music. He also wrote his most famous work
Symphony No. 9 (From the New Word) during his first year in America. In 1895,
Dvorak returned to his homeland and lived there the rest of his life.